On Thursday, I had the extremely rare privilege of getting an inside look at the kitchen laboratory at Intellectual Ventures. If you aren’t aware, Nathan Myhrvold (Intellectual Ventures CEO) along with chefs Chris Young and Maxime Bilet, has spent the last four years working on the book Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking. This will be no ordinary cookbook – at 2400 pages and 5 volumes, it is unarguably the most in-depth, detailed compendium on the scientific process of cooking that has ever been written. I’ll have many more interesting facts on the book in upcoming posts, but if you want the big picture, check out my interview with Nathan Myhrvold back in May.

The pictures and videos below are from a reception that the Modernist Cuisine team hosted as part of the International Food Blogger’s Conference. Needless to say, this is the most sophisticated kitchen on earth, and as a food geek, I was in heaven. Click through for more photos and video.

[Click the picture to view full-size] This panorama gives you a sense of the kitchen’s layout. All of the stations are on wheels and the whole kitchen can be rearranged as the team focuses on different projects.

In this video clip, CEO and King of the Food Geeks Dr. Nathan Myhrvold discusses the decision to not dumb down the book to cover only the equipment you’re likely to have in your home kitchen.

[Click the picture for the full-size image (so you can read the labels)] This is the Modernist Cuisine kitchen’s idea of a spice cabinet. Many of the products are available through the website www.chefrubber.com

A centrifuge is used here to separate solids from liquids and clarify sauces and stocks. The green bottle is finely-blended raw peas that have separated into solids and pea water.

In this video, Chef Chris Young talks about the benefits of having a kitchen without customers. The unique design of the Modernist Cuisine kitchen allows the staff (up to 36 people at certain points in the book’s development) to focus on research and testing of new recipes and techniques.

You’re looking at the world’s only deep-fried watermelon chips. I have no idea how they managed to deep fry watermelon, but I promise that it’s a dangerous proposition if attempted incorrectly. The chips were light and delicious, with a recognizable hint of caramelized watermelon flavor.

Those look like beautiful cherries, don’t they? They’re actually made of foie gras. And yes, they were delicious.

Chefs plate a small bite of horse mackerel sashimi with ginger and plum, proving that not all of the recipes require a particle accelerator.

My favorite dish of the night’: "tongue and cheek pastrami and rye”. A thin slice of sous vide smoked Wagyu beef cheek is served with thinly-shaved tongue and delicate rye chips. But, what makes this dish spectacular is the beef marrow mousseline (shown being shot out of a CO2 charger). The mousseline is like the richest, fattiest mayonnaise you could imagine, except it’s made from sous vide egg yolks and bone marrow, and it is served warm.

The frozen pistachio “cream” (ie. pistachio ice cream) alone is worth the price of the book. As you can see from its beautiful glossy sheen, the ice cream was creamy and incredibly smooth. What makes this dish really incredible is that the ice cream is made only from pistachios, emulsifiers and sugar. No milk. No Cream. No eggs. That’s right, it’s vegan!

And, for a little whimsy, they made olive oil and vanilla bean gummy worms.

And finally, I was thrilled to get a picture with Nathan. See that grin on my face? I kept it for days.

For more information on the book, check back here and also be sure to visit the official site for the project, www.ModernistCuisine.com.

Low and slow… it’s true for sous vide, and its definitely true for smoking. And, if you live in Seattle, you probably know that one of the worlds best smoked foods is salmon. Smoked salmon has a wonderfully rich and concentrated flavor, but unfortunately it also has the texture of wet leather. For this recipe, I used a Smoking Gun – a remarkable little device that creates a cold, concentrated smoke that can be captured in a container, or in this case, a vacuum bag [Disclosure: the Smoking Gun I used was a demo unit provided by PolyScience.] The result: instant smoky flavor. Then, we delicately cook the salmon to just above rare, which retains the fish’s buttery texture.

Preheat your water bath to 45.5°C. [Note: Consuming undercooked fish blah blah blah. Some people will cook their salmon at 39°C, but that’s a little rare even for my taste. If you’re squeamish, crank up the temp to 52°C.]

Remove the skin from the salmon fillets (reserve for frying, if you want.) Divide the salt and pepper between the fillets and coat both sides. Place the fillets, together or individually) into vacuum seal bags, but don’t seal them yet.

Prepare an ice bath large enough for the salmon fillets in their bags.

Load a Smoking Gun with hickory wood shavings. Insert the exhaust hose into the open end of the bag and fold over the open edge to partially seal the bag.

Turn on the Smoking Gun and light the wood chips. Smoke the entire bowl into the bag, retaining as much smoke as possible.

Holding the open end of the bag up, submerge the bag into the ice bath for a few seconds to condense the remaining smoke. Seal the open end in the vacuum sealer.

Cook the salmon in the water bath for 15 minutes. Remove and serve.

Given the soft texture of the salmon, I thought it would be good to pair it with something crunchy. I fried kale leaves in grapeseed oil for a few seconds per side (look out for major oil splatter!) and roasted asparagus with olive oil and rosemary salt. I also fried the leftover salmon skin until it was slightly crispy and used it to wrap the asparagus. This is one of my new favorite salmon preparations, and I can’t wait to see what else I can instant-smoke!